murder and narcissism?

All right here we go again.

First, I spent the weekend with a group of about 50 high school students and worked with them on the wonders of God’s created world from a faith/science perspective. What a considerate, respectful, fun, and wild (normal) group of teens. We were in the local mountains at a church camp, and it even snowed! For southern California, actually a treat.

So no news for a weekend. Then I have to look at this. Six seventh grade students arrested for allegedly plotting a massacre at their middle school. A small town in Alaska is understandably on high alert as these kids were planning on knocking out the computer system and phone system, so they could buy time to kills students and teachers before their escape. “Why?” is the obvious question we always ask at times like this. It is always best to let the perpetrators speak for themselves.

According to the police chief, here is what they were talking about.

The seventh-graders wanted to seek revenge for being picked on by other students, Lindhag said. They also disliked staff and students, he said.

You have to be kidding. If I killed everyone who picked on me when I was in junior high, there would be a lot a bodies to recover from the streets of Racine, Wisconsin. How about you? Or even more absurd, what if we killed everyone we disliked at that age? Would there be anybody left in any town in world?

This is an outrageous example of individual and group narcissism. If I am the center of my own universe and I become a victim of alleged unfair treatment, I guess automatically my conscience just goes out the window.

From the Weimar Republic of Germany in the 30’s to the murderers of 9/11, to the hallways of North Pole Middle School in Alaska, when you see yourself as a victim, and you are your own god, then you get this. It is also the foundation of most human sin. Turning in upon yourself. St. Augustine and later, Martin Luther, called it et peccator curvatus. One metaphor for sin is this, “curving in upon oneself.”

We are all capable of being narcisstic, curavtusing peccators. Self absorbed to such an extent that we lash out at anyone who dares look at us with anything other than worship and admiration. That is a pretty typical human condition. Once we start murdering, our evil becomes Evil.

More tomorrow.